Shiba Inu Whales Load up on Over 1 Trillion $SHIB Amid Shibarium Testnet Hype

Some of the largest whales on the Ethereum ($ETH) ecosystem have accumulated over 1.2 trillion tokens of the meme-inspired cryptocurrency Shiba Inu ($SHIB) just days after dumping 10 trillion tokens on the market after the launch of the Shibarium testnet.

Blockchain data, first flagged by whale monitoring service WhaleStats, has revealed that the buying came from two large whales within the ecosystem. One whale, whose wallet was tagged “Kvothe,” has purchased nearly 900 billion SHIB for $9.61 million.

A few hours later a famous SHIB whale, tagged ‘BlueWhale0073’ took a new entry position into the token. ‘BlueWhale0073’ executed a transaction by acquiring 122.04 billion tokens worth $1.28 million.

While the purchases made by these whales were significant, they did little to boost SHIB’s price. The cryptocurrency has latest been moving along with the overall cryptocurrency markets, which have been rallying amid a banking crisis in the US.

Rising interest rates and inflation have led to the collapse of banks like Silicon Valley Bank (SVB) and Signature Bank, which were recently joined by Credit Suisse, a 167-year-old bank that was acquired by UBS in a deal supported by the Swiss National Bank. Digital assets have soared as a result, with BTC surpassing $28,000 after a 30% move.

The whales’ movements come after the testnet launch of the highly anticipated layer-2 network for the project, Shibarium. The network’s mainnet, as CryptoGlobe reported, could launch as early as May 2023. Shibarium is designed to enable fast and cheap transactions for SHIB and other tokens in its ecosystem. It also burns SHIB with every transaction.

Shibarium’s native token is Bone ShibaSwap ($BONE), which is used to pay for gas fees and reward validators and delegators on the network. On March 11, 2023, Shiba Inu announced the launch of PUPPYNET, which is the early beta test of Shibarium. Anyone can access PUPPYNET through a new website and experiment with Shibarium’s features and functionalities.

Notably, most Shiba Inu investors have shown they aren’t planning on selling en masse, as the median time that users on COINBASE hold onto the meme-inspired cryptocurrency before either selling it or moving it to an external address has surpassed the 230-day mark.